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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22782304">Found Cat</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot/pseuds/vulcan_slash_robot'>vulcan_slash_robot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Animal Transformation, Domestic, Fluff and Feels, Happy Ending, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Identity Porn, Light Angst, Low Fantasy, M/M, Misunderstandings, POV Alternating, Past Child Abuse, Soulmates, Unreliable Narrator, kind of, whoops tony's a cat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:08:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,045</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22782304</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot/pseuds/vulcan_slash_robot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Small male cat, about eight pounds, shorthair, black all over excepting white tuxedo, socks, and mustache. Vet estimates about seven years old. No microchip or collar, not fixed, but far too friendly and healthy to be feral. Found near the scenic overlook at Greenbriar park early in the morning on June 25."</p><p><i>Where my soulmate was supposed to meet me,</i> Steve thinks, but doesn't add. Instead he fills in his contact information and attaches a photo, and sends the post out into the internet to do its job. </p><p>In his lap, the cat he has temporarily taken custody of sits in a loaf, with its face on the edge of the desk. It does this a lot, seeming to watch the screen almost like it's reading what he's written. It heaves a deep breath, like a sigh, and Steve sets to scratching its ears until it starts to purr. </p><p>"It'll be okay, buddy," he murmurs, because it will. Maybe the cat's a long way from home, and maybe Steve's true love missed their date, but those things can be fixed. Until then, at least they've got each other.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, background bucky barnes/natasha romanov, lots of other background relationships - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>120</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>496</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Today. Today, today, this morning, today, right now.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s all Tony can think, spiraling through his mind with a giddy excitement. He’s been waiting for forty-two years, and it’s going to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>today.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He sucks in a deep breath of cool air, trying to steady himself. It still might not work, he tries to remember. They may not have got it right, yet. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the echo comes back to him, a feeling of </span>
  <em>
    <span>soon </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>now </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>ready</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony grins to himself, skipping up over the curb onto the next darkened sidewalk. The echoes are coming back lazy and slow, dim around the edges; he’s almost positive that his person is asleep. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>As well you should be, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he thinks back at them, even though he knows that the words won’t go through. Not yet. The feeling might, though. The warmth and affection with which he means it, the approval, mixed in with the elation and anticipation that are already pinging steadily back and forth. Not the words, though. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sleep, angel,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he adds anyway. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll be waiting for you</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s far too early for decent folk to be out. The sun won’t begin to think about rising for another hour or so, probably. Tony hasn’t checked the time lately, but all the businesses he’s passed have been locked and shuttered, metal grates protecting their dark windows, and only a handful of cars have challenged his blatant jaywalking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Tony’s never been all that decent, and anyway he’s up late, not early, the buzz under his skin having left him no chance of getting any sleep. He’d called Rhodey, earlier, early enough that Rhodey almost wasn’t mad about being woken up, but he’d been so afraid to jinx the whole thing that he hadn’t really explained much of the plan in the end. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Big day tomorrow,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he’d hinted with a grin. </span>
  <em>
    <span>If it goes well, you’re my first call. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Rhodey had audibly rolled his eyes and said “sure, Tony” a few times and hung up to go back to sleep, and Tony had only felt noticeably less anxious for about five minutes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a good plan. It’s a solid plan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony knows where he’s supposed to be. He knows the view by heart. He’s positive of the exact park bench, the one from which he’ll be able to see the clock tower framed against the sea, exactly so. He’s supposed to be there at dawn, so he’s a little early. A lot early. That’s fine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s going to be there, waiting, on their bench, when he sees his person for the first time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All of the air is knocked from Tony’s lungs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It happens so quickly that for a few seconds the impact is all that registers, and he doesn’t realize that he’s also been moved until it’s over. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Tony gets his bearings back, there’s crumbling brickwork digging into his back and his wrists are pinned above his head. He’s in the dark, the real dark, back in an alley away from the pools of orange glow under the streetlights. He’s gasping, his stomach hurts, something </span>
  <em>
    <span>hit </span>
  </em>
  <span>him and he’s starting to suspect that it was one of the three shadows that loom slightly-darker between him and the opposite wall of the alley. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good morning,” Tony wheezes, heart racing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re not going anywhere, so don’t bother trying,” a voice warns. Middle Shadow is doing their best Christian Bale. Okay.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not trying,” Tony promises. None of the shadows are close enough to touch, which begs the question of what’s holding his wrists, but investigating might imply more of a struggle than he wants to show. “What’s the occasion?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Payday,” Left Shadow growls, and looms closer. Tony recoils, his stomach clenching in fear, before he realizes that the ghoulish grin he can now see on this one’s face is a mask. A black mask, covering the lower half of their face, in what looks like shiny leather with just a few too many square white teeth printed on it. Teeth Shadow, as Tony is now going to call them, starts patting Tony for pockets. No, thank you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Petty cash in the left front pocket,” he chokes out. No patting, please.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Teeth Shadow zeroes in on the specified pocket and pulls out Tony’s money clip. They nod, and pass the cash to Middle Shadow. “Phone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not a question, so Tony says “Inside breast pocket, right side.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Teeth follows his directions again, handing off his phone, but then goes back immediately for the left inside pocket. “Aw, c’mon, you’ve already got my cash,” Tony protests, knowing that Teeth must have felt his wallet. “You really gonna make me replace my cards? They won’t do you any good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Teeth hesitates for a second, but Middle urges them on. “Take everything. Rich fuck like this probably keeps a couple thousand in reserve where the server won’t see it when he pulls a five outta the clip.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony levels an unamused look at what he hopes is the speaker’s face, but they must be able to see him better than he can see them, because they snap back, “I know your kind, Wall Street. Those </span>
  <em>
    <span>shoes </span>
  </em>
  <span>are worth more than the house I grew up in. In fact, take his shoes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As much as he wants to huff back a “how rude” or “you’re mean” he would rather not find out if any of his new friends are the type to break a jaw to prove a point, so he just lifts one foot at a time and silently mourns the loss of his perfectly-broken-in Salvatore Ferragamo’s. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can you at least leave my driver’s license?” Tony tries not whine, and to put no confrontation in the words. Let them know they’ve won. “You’ll just have to ditch it anyway. Don’t send me to the DMV, that’s inhumane.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Teeth hesitates again, and mask or not, Tony decides they’re his favorite. They go so far as to turn back and look at Middle, and a moment passes in silent communication. Maybe literally, if the two of them are bonded. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Leave the license, and I won’t even file a police report,” Tony bargains, but then, swiftly, realizing the implicit threat on the other end of that offer: “It’s not like I’ve seen your faces anyway, nobody’s going to find </span>
  <em>
    <span>you,</span>
  </em>
  <span> but there’ll be less cops poking around the area if I don’t need anything back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Teeth cocks their head, and Middle heaves a sigh. “Oh my god, fine, give him the stupid license, we’ve been here too long.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony breathes out in relief. “Oh, thank god, thank you, silver lining, okay--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Guys?” Teeth cuts him off in a much higher voice than they’d used before. They’re holding Tony’s driver’s license in a way that suggests they can see it clearly enough to read. “Why do I know the name ‘Tony Stark’?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“What.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Let me see that!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All three shadows huddle around the card and Tony feels his pulse ratcheting up again, until there’s a soft, almost subsonic noise and a dim green light blooms above the group. It takes a second for Tony’s eyes to adjust, but then he gets his first good look at his captors. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Teeth, in addition to the teeth, has a large, square eyepatch with a wide strap over their right eye. Middle shadow is wearing massive, triangular, very pointy sunglasses and a messy blond wig. Right shadow, the silent partner so far, is wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and a black headband with some kind of metal decoration at the center, and has what appear to be whiskers drawn on their face. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony doesn’t know these characters, but he knows cosplay when he sees it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh my god, they’re children.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re absolutely babies, they’re twelve (they’re probably sixteen) and Tony’s very upset and confused about this but he doesn’t have a lot of time to worry about it right now because that ball of green light is surrounding Right Anime’s fist and it’s not coming from anywhere and oh, this is very bad, they’ve got a Warlock. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony looks up at his wrists, finally, now that he’s got a little light to see by and he’s not being watched. There’s not a god damn thing holding them up. He absolutely cannot move them, he is firmly fucking stuck, but the only thing keeping him here is this desperate anime mugger child’s brain powers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>FUCK.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shit, shit shit shit, shit, SHIT,” Middle Anime is muttering in an absolute panic. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do we do? What do we do?” The Warlock hisses. The headband they’re wearing is a tiny bit loose and they keep having to push it up out of their eyes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe it’s not him,” Teeth offers, sounding like they’re pleading with the universe. “It’s just a name, maybe he’s a different Tony Stark.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you SEE those shoes?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Marshall what the fuck are you doing?? He can see us!” Middle Anime barks, and the light goes out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t say my name!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He didn’t know it was your </span>
  <em>
    <span>real </span>
  </em>
  <span>name until </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>said so!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Holy shit stop saying things!!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I swear to god I am not this scary,” Tony pipes in. “I didn’t see anything, I don’t know anything, we can all go home, everything is fine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe a little bit of Patronizing Adult gets into Tony’s delivery there, but he really just wants the terrified children to not make bad fear-decisions, please, thank you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is bad, this is so, so bad,” Middle rants on, heedless, “Fuck, this guy? This guy probably has, like, an emergency beacon that goes off the second somebody </span>
  <em>
    <span>thinks </span>
  </em>
  <span>about robbing him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shit, this is a Starkphone, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tony Stark’s personal Starkphone</span>
  </em>
  <span> they’re tracking us right now, fuck!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a loud crunch, like Tony’s phone has been flung into a brick wall with all the power of teenage panic behind it. “You could’ve gotten a lot of money for that,” he says weakly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We have to do something. Marshall, you have to do something. He knows too much.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t sign up for killing people!” the Warlock squeaks, and Tony’s heart stutters to a stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No! Don’t kill him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jesus,</span>
  </em>
  <span> you want to go to jail literally forever? Just make him forget this whole thing. We were never here. Can you do that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a moment of hesitation, and Tony holds his breath. Warlocks are so, so powerful, but it takes a lifetime to get good at steering that power, and this is a baby. A scared baby. Anything could happen if they try for something that big.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...sure.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, hey,” Tony tries one last time. “Marshall, buddy, don’t, I will pay you so much money not to--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony doesn’t get to finish that thought.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no bright flash of light, but there’s a terrible sucking noise, and reality twists just a few degrees counterclockwise, and suddenly this alley smells very, very bad, and the shadows have gotten very, very tall, but also less dark? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A few seconds pass in stunned silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Just as the shadows seem to be getting over their shock, Tony realizes he’s not stuck to the wall anymore, and he bolts. The muggers shout at each other some more, and they try to chase him, but he’s absolutely fucking out of there. They never had a chance of catching him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later, he’ll have time to process the fact that this is because he is now very small, and very fast on four little paws, and hard to see in the dark, but right now all he wants is to be as far away as he can get from the Bad Decision Shadows.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>********</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Today, now, today, right here.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s all Steve can think, swirling through his mind and making his breath come short. He would’ve thought it would be echoing, but maybe his soulmate is asleep, and dreaming about something else. Probably. They’ve never seemed like much of an early riser, before. Maybe it was a bit rude of Steve to push </span>
  <em>
    <span>dawn </span>
  </em>
  <span>into the details of this meeting, with that considered, but it was just so much more practical, and anyway Steve doesn’t mind waiting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can barely sit still. The park bench is cold under his thighs, but that’s to be expected. The first glimmers of sunlight are only just beginning to paint the sky behind the clock tower, glinting pink and gold over the sea. There’s salt on the breeze that’s ruffling his hair. He’s got his best jacket zipped up tight against it--the old vintage bomber that Peggy had chipped in for when they’d found it at that thrift shop, because it was real leather and wildly out of Steve’s budget but she’d watched him try it on and flatly refused to let him leave the shop without it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>For the greater good,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she’d said, solemnly laying her cash on the counter. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It seemed like the sort of thing he ought to have on when he met the love of his life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve shifts on the bench again, telling himself that the little curl of unease winding through his excitement is just nerves. He’d woken up so suddenly, this morning, in a cold sweat, from what he could’ve </span>
  <em>
    <span>sworn </span>
  </em>
  <span>had been a nice dream--just nerves, he tells himself. He’s waited his whole life for this day, it’s not weird to be nervous.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a faint sound from down the path and Steve’s head whips toward it at once. Is this it? Are they here? Steve’s heart is in his throat, he can’t breathe, he’s going to cry. All the half-imagined visions of his soulmate that he’s ever dreamed up flash before his eyes one last time, a last chance to indulge in the mystery before it’s solved, before he finally sees--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, it’s a cat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve’s held breath comes rushing out as a shaky laugh. It’s just a cat. God, when his actual soulmate gets here, he might literally faint. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Get it together, Rogers.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He runs both hands through his hair and decides to let the cat distract him. It’d looked up at him when he laughed and is now jogging toward him, meowing hoarsely every few steps. It’s got a funny gait, an awkward stomping run, almost like it’s not sure how long its legs are and it can’t understand where the ground is. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, little buddy,” Steve reaches a hand down, knuckles crooked, and the cat breaks into a stumbling gallop. It doesn’t slow down the way Steve would have expected, and startles them both by ramming its nose into his hand at top speed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve flinches back, instinctively, and the cat screeches to a halt, looking poleaxed. Its ears are down flat, hackles up, tail puffed, legs tense and akimbo. It stays frozen like that for a few moments, and Steve can’t help but laugh again. The sound seems to break through the poor thing’s shock, and it settles into a seated position between Steve’s shoes, nonchalantly licking its back foot a few times, because clearly nothing embarrassing has happened here, to anyone, actually. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The little creature seems to take a moment to get its bearings, scanning the path, the bench, the trees, and taking a long look out over the sea before apparently remembering that Steve exists and is interesting. The cat turns back toward him in a sudden twist that nearly knocks it over. It reaches up a paw to Steve’s knee, meowing again, louder than before. It stands up on its hind legs and leans up toward him with its ears pricked forward, staring intently into Steve’s eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh my god,” Steve breathes, and the cat yowls at him, plaintively, straining upward until its nose almost touches Steve’s where he’s leaned down to meet it. “Look at your little </span>
  <em>
    <span>face.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat drops back to the ground, it looks disappointed--no doubt dismayed that its howling has yet to produce any treats, but Steve can’t stop grinning. It’s got a moustache. The cat is black all over, shiny and sleek, with a white tuxedo and dainty little socks and an honest-to-god</span>
  <em>
    <span> moustache--</span>
  </em>
  <span>white markings along its upper lips that swoop and curve into full and regal handlebars</span>
  <em>
    <span>. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He’s never seen anything like it, not in real life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve tries to get a closer look but the cat seems to have switched into “ignoring you now” mode and refuses to face him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aw, hey, I’m sorry, was that offensive? It’s a nice face, I like it,” Steve offers his hand again, but the cat only stares at it, disgruntled, and leans away, so Steve takes the hint and doesn’t go for the pet. “Okay, that’s okay, you don’t know me. Were you hoping for someone else?” The cat mews, soft and low--it almost sounds like an answer, but Steve’s been on the internet enough times to have seen a few videos of cats filling in gaps in songs and conversations. Sometimes kitties just like to participate, he knows that. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sing me the song of your people, Soup</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “Yeah, I know the feeling. Sorry I don’t have any food for you, you’re not the kind of friend I was expecting to meet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve feels his eyebrows knitting together briefly as a flicker of worry crosses his mind. The cat looks decently well-fed and healthy, at a glance. It seems like the sort of animal that probably has a home and someone to love it, although it isn’t wearing a collar. Is it lost? Is someone looking for it? The thought passes quickly, though, much quicker than it would have on any other day. Cats can look after themselves. It’ll be fine. He can worry about it later.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Right now, the sun is starting to peek over the horizon and all the clouds are going gold behind the clock tower, and instead of worrying about animal welfare, Steve is remembering why he came here in the first place. The surge of butterflies in his stomach nearly lifts him off the bench.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Craving reassurance, he shoves his hands into his pockets. He winds the fingers of his right hand into the cool, beaded chain he finds there, and runs the edge of his thumb over the old familiar letters and numbers, still raised and readable, but smooth from years of similar treatment. The tags are right where they’re supposed to be, because of course they are, but the confirmation settles him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat has crept under the bench and folded itself into a loaf, solidly dismissing Steve’s presence, but he can still see it between the slats of the seat. The jingling in his pocket seems to attract its attention; it makes a small, curious </span>
  <em>
    <span>mrrp </span>
  </em>
  <span>and when Steve checks it’s watching him from below, ears twitching at every soft, metallic clink.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry,” Steve tells it with another smile. He holds out the dog tags where the cat can see them. “Not for kitties.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat, with all the reverence and understanding one might expect, scurries back out to get a better view, and swipes a paw in the direction of the shiny dangly noisy thing, although from much too far away to touch.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve laughs. “What did I </span>
  <em>
    <span>just </span>
  </em>
  <span>say. No. These are for my, uh,” his lungs try to freeze up on him, it’s too big, the reality is too much. He forces himself to take a breath. “For my soulmate.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat’s swiping paw falters and its attention shifts to Steve’s face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s coming to meet me,” Steve almost whispers, eyes drawn to the worn outline of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Rogers, Joseph A. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He winds up the tags into his palm and tips them to catch the light. “Right here, any minute.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a scrabbling sound, claws on old wood, and when Steve looks the cat has hauled itself up onto the bench beside him. It cranes its neck to peer down at the tags, then up at Steve. It meows so softly it almost doesn’t make a sound.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know, I know, I’m not supposed to assume,” Steve grumbles good-naturedly, more in response to the reproach that Bucky has trained him to expect than to anything the cat has done. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“They’re</span>
  </em>
  <span> coming to meet me. They’ve just always felt like a </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>to me. Everybody always says you shouldn’t try to guess, because it’s so subjective and hard to tell, but…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pauses to scan the path again, in both directions, and the woods behind himself for good measure. The cat meows at him, short and loud. He smiles, imagining that it’s impatient for him to go on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry, had to be sure we were still alone. It’s very rude to talk about what your person has thrown at you, you know? They don’t really get to decide what you know about them, you can’t assume it’s okay to share. But </span>
  <em>
    <span>you’re </span>
  </em>
  <span>not going to spread this around, right?” He grins at the cat, and it solemnly places a paw on his knee. It’s probably still hoping that he’s going to pull a can of tuna out of his pocket if it just looks at him sadly enough. Still, it gives the impression of an interested audience, whatever its true motives may be. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The thing is,” Steve starts off in a conspiratorial whisper, but the attempt to keep his tone light doesn’t last long. “I just know him. He’s always been there. You know I can’t actually remember the first feeling I caught?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat looks back at him over its shoulder, as if scandalized.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve snorts on another laugh. “It’s true, you might as well ask me to remember the first time I saw my mother’s face. I was that young. In fact one of the earliest memories I have at all…” Steve trails off and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “...well I shouldn’t bring it up right away, probably, as much as I want to. You just can’t look into your soulmate’s eyes for the first time in your life and then the next second demand to know what the hell they were so sad about on December 17, 1991, can you? God, I cried for weeks. My ma took me to the emergency room, she thought I was gonna die of dehydration. Imagine her shock when the doctors told her I wasn’t sick or in pain, just catching grief. Three years old.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something cold touches his face and Steve flinches, but it’s just the cat. Its nose, to be precise. It has both front paws braced against his upper arm, which he can’t feel through the leather of his jacket, and it’s leaning up to his face with the biggest, saddest eyes he’s ever seen. It warbles a distraught little cry at him and starts rubbing its face along the side of his jaw.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve sputters--the affection is heartwarming, but god knows where this thing has been. He fends it off, rubbing its ears to distract it, which seems to work. It shoves its face into his hands instead, chasing the attention, and climbs onto his lap. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aw, it’s okay, little buddy,” Steve assures it. “Whatever happened, it was a long time ago. For me </span>
  <em>
    <span>and </span>
  </em>
  <span>him. Someday I’ll get to find out what it was. Which anniversary do you think is the ‘Solving Traumatic Childhood Mysteries’ one? Three years? Seven?” The cat settles into a round puddle on top of his thighs, and he tapers off his skritches into gently stroking the back of its neck. After a few seconds, he carefully rubs a thumb over its ear, pressing it flat and confirming what he thought he’d noticed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> “You’re freezing, aren’t you?” Steve cups one of its paws in his other hand. It doesn’t resist, just presses its little toe-beans into Steve’s palm. They’re like ice. “Yeah. Chilly for June, isn’t it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The little thread of worry from before floats back to the surface of Steve’s mind. What is a cat this sweet, trusting, and well-groomed doing out here on its own? If it’s a housepet, it can’t possibly know how to look after itself in the wild. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have an idea, if you’ll humor me,” Steve offers, slowing his petting to a stop. The cat looks up. Steve, careful not to jostle the cat as he moves, unzips his jacket about halfway and holds it open. “Nice and warm in here. Interested?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat glances from his face to his chest and back a few times, clearly trying to decode the situation. It stands, hesitantly, and raises one dainty paw, lowering it toward the zipper teeth, no no, pulling it back, toward Steve’s chest, ah, no, lower--it nearly brings the paw to rest over Steve’s abs, but pulls away again and sits back, stymied. It gives another almost-soundless meow. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, it’s okay,” Steve assures it. He twists sideways a little, so that the jacket lays open over his arm. “Is this better?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat noses in, still cautious, but it seems to feel more secure about climbing onto the shelf provided by Steve’s forearm. Within a few moments’ shuffling it finds a comfortable position, wedged between the lining of Steve’s jacket and his left side, with its head tipped back and its chin laid against his ribs, blinking lazily up at him. After a few seconds more, Steve dares to zip the jacket up a little; not so much that it couldn’t get out if it wanted to, but enough to cut off a bit more of the morning air that’s leaching warmth from them both. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cat just purrs.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I meant to get a lot more of this done before I started posting but I Do Not Have Patience, so here's the first bit! You get more whenever I finish writing more, i have no idea how long it will be. Let's find out!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bucky clomps up the stairs, putting a little extra weight behind each step and getting a good loud stomp out of each one. It’ll annoy the old couple on the third floor, but it’ll also rattle the paintings in his and Steve’s living room in a way that Steve is unlikely to miss.</p><p>This is important, because Steve hasn’t answered his texts, which means Steve probably hasn’t looked at his phone, which means Bucky is in danger of seeing Steve’s person’s junk, and that’s just not how he wants to meet the newest member of his family.</p><p>He’s also planning to knock, but he’s <em> not </em>planning to wait for someone to come to the door. He lives here, dammit. Four days ought to be enough time that he can reasonably expect all persons in attendance to have their pants on, especially if they’ve been warned, and he’s doing his best.</p><p>There are voices coming from behind the door, or at least Steve’s voice, when he runs out of steps to stomp on and arrives at their landing. He dawdles, jangling his keys, and raps twice on the door with his knuckles--left-handed, so that Steve can’t possibly not know it’s him--and then finally unlocks the door and swings it open. </p><p>With his eyes closed.</p><p>“Anybody naked in here, this is your last chance to bolt for the bedroom,” Bucky announces into the apartment as he shuffles in, blind.</p><p>Somewhere on the other side of the room, Steve bursts out laughing.</p><p>“He means you,” Steve says to someone, fondly. “You gonna run for it? No? Well, that’s your choice.” He laughs again. “You can look, Buck, you won’t be traumatized, I promise.”</p><p>“You say that, but your opinion on what is and is not traumatic to look at is not likely to match mine, in this case.”</p><p>Steve snorts, and Bucky turns towards the sound with eyes still closed but eyebrows raised.</p><p>“Whatever you’re expecting, you won’t see it,” Steve assures him. He sounds...down. Bucky’s eyes open immediately.</p><p>His echo-location efforts were only a few degrees off, and he spots Steve at once, sitting on the living room floor (fully clothed) next to some kind of cardboard monstrosity. Steve has built this, clearly, it’s a mass of duct tape and wood pulp: old moving boxes left over from their last move,  and product-cartons that look like they’ve been brought up from the shop, all with holes in varying shapes and sizes hacked out of their sides. It’s strapped together into a shape that might slightly resemble a castle, if castles often listed dangerously to the right and sagged in the middle. It’s even got ramparts, in places.</p><p>It was not there when Bucky left, four days ago.</p><p>“Why.”</p><p>“Sounded like fun,” Steve answers. He’s being alarmingly nonchalant. He lays an arm over the nearest corner, causing a minor crumple in a lower layer and dangling his fingers over one of the cutouts. “Misty likes it.”</p><p>A tiny, white paw with tiny, pink toes flashes out of the hole to swat Steve’s fingers away. Bucky blinks.</p><p><em> “Stormy </em> likes it.” </p><p>The same thing happens again, and Steve sighs. “Mittens likes it?” he tries. There’s an indignant yowl from inside the cardboard castle.</p><p>“Lucifer?” Swat. “Henry.” Shuffling noises. “Rumpleteazer.”</p><p>“Absolutely not,” Bucky weighs in on that one. He crosses the living room and sits on the carpet in front of Steve. All he can see through the hole is a suggestion of sleek, black fur in the shadows. “Context would be fantastic, by the way.”</p><p>Steve shrugs, helplessly. “Cat, Bucky. Bucky, cat. There’s a cat. Say hello, cat.”</p><p>There’s movement in the darkness, and a soft, chattering meow.</p><p>“Yeaaah, got that part,” Bucky coaxes. “Does the cat belong to someone I should meet, or…?”</p><p>Steve’s jaw goes tense, his eyes downcast, and Bucky knows that face. He knows most of Steve’s faces by now, and this wasn’t the one he was hoping to see today. Not after Steve had been so sure.</p><p>“Aw, pal,” Bucky says aloud. “Not yet, huh?”</p><p>He leans back against the sofa, and Steve stretches his legs out so that they lay next to Bucky’s, but from the other direction.</p><p>“I don’t know what happened,” Steve mumbles. “I was there every day, for hours. I even went back at sunset, yesterday, in case I had the time backwards. I was--it was <em> right, </em> we <em> had </em>it. Every detail was resonating. And now he won’t echo me on any of it. I don’t know what changed.”</p><p>“Hey, you’ll get there,” Bucky says softly, bumping the side of his shoe against Steve’s knee. “If it wasn’t right, it wasn’t right. You’ll find them. Next time.”</p><p>There’s a scuffing noise, and the cardboard castle shivers like weight is shifting inside it. Through the sliver of daylight between the edge of the boxes and Steve’s side, Bucky can just see a dark shape slink past. Steve glances down, registering the movement, and reaches a hand behind himself, into the triangle of void space between the small of his back and the wall. Bucky can hear purring.</p><p>In an instant, Bucky’s heart is racing. He’s short of breath, there’s no air in the room, his arms are weak and there’s a sickening tingle in his calves. He tries to force himself to breathe. This anxiety doesn’t belong to him. He’s not the one panicking. </p><p>“Are <em> you </em>okay?” Steve knows all of Bucky’s faces, too.</p><p>“It’s not me,” Bucky says, shaking his head. Ugh, phantom adrenaline is such a bitch. “Mine’s having some kind of <em> week. </em>Catching all kinds of a bad time, the last few days.”</p><p>Steve nods, accepting. They share a quiet moment while Bucky tries to send back a general sense of calm and reassurance to his person, but it doesn’t echo, so he’ll probably never know if they caught any. Well, he tried. It’s not like he can do much more than worry, until he’s met them, even if they’re having strong enough shitty feelings that the bond wants to share them with Bucky every few hours.</p><p>“I notice you still haven’t said why we have a cat, now,” Bucky points out, once he’s feeling a little more settled. </p><p>Steve shrugs at him. “You sit on a park bench long enough, cats start to adopt you. I do not control the cat.”</p><p>“Pretty sure you control whether or not you bring one into the house, Stevie.”</p><p>“You haven’t met this cat,” Steve counters. </p><p>“Well, we <em> were </em>introduced, technically, but you seem to be having a problem with names.”</p><p>Steve makes a face. “I’m sort of trying to guess what his name already is?”</p><p>“...you fucking what.”</p><p>“I took him to the vet and he didn’t have a microchip, but he’s seven years old and he’s the healthiest cat they’ve ever seen! He didn’t even have fleas! I’ve got ‘found cat’ ads up everywhere I could think to put one, someone will recognize him. Somewhere out there, this boy has a family. And a name. I’m not changing his whole identity while he stays with us for a couple of weeks.”</p><p>There’s an emphatic little <em> mrrp </em>from behind Steve. Bucky shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose.</p><p>“Steve, I love you,” he begins, as he always does if he’s about to lay out exactly how much of a moron Steve is being today, because it’s important to state that up front. “Cats do not answer to names. They don’t come when called. He may have a name and he may know what it is, but you’re not going to know if you say it. He won’t care.”</p><p>“You can’t prove that,” Steve scoffs, prim and haughty.</p><p>“What’re you gonna do, call him by every name that’s ever been thought of until he responds?” They make eye contact for two second. “You’re gonna call him by every name that’s ever been thought of, until he responds.”</p><p>“I’m sure we won’t have to go through <em> every </em>name, will we, Frodo?”</p><p>The cat doesn’t react, noticeably, but Bucky can see its tail around the edge of Steve’s hip, and it’s thumping impatiently on the floor.</p><p>“Not Frodo,” Bucky observes, based on that evidence.</p><p>“Figaro.”</p><p>The cat’s back feet slide into view, beans-up in a languorous stretch.</p><p>“Colder.”</p><p>“Are you gonna help, or just judge me?”</p><p>“Switchboard doesn’t like your names, that’s not my fault.”</p><p>
  <em> “Switchboard?!” </em>
</p><p>“Think outside the box, Rogers, a millenial may have named this thing.”</p><p>Steve thinks about it for a second, then twists backwards to look at the cat over his shoulder. “Mr. President?” he tries.</p><p>“Any reaction?” </p><p>“Well, he blinked at me.”</p><p>“It’s a start. Felix? Garfield.”</p><p>“Garfield is orange.” Steve protests.</p><p>“Just trying to think like a teenager. You don’t think he looks like a Garfield, what does he look like? A Herman? Justin? Howard.”</p><p>The cat makes a strangled noise, almost like it’s about to cough up a hairball. Steve peers back at it again, but it must look fine, judging by his lack of panic. </p><p>“He’s just a little guy,” Steve muses. “Tiny Tim?”</p><p>“David.”</p><p>“Tom Thumb.”</p><p>“Peewee.”</p><p>The cat’s tail pulls out of Bucky’s line of sight and a sleek black shape flashes past with a low growl, back into the castle. The castle, in all its questionable glory, tilts violently forward and nearly topples facedown onto the carpet--Bucky yanks his legs back reflexively to get out of the impact zone--but Steve is faster. His arm snaps sideways, clotheslining the top level of the tower. The structure bows out in the middle, still trying to fall despite the obstacle Steve has provided, but the tape holds and he’s able to tip it back into place.</p><p>Steve bends down to peer into one of the holes, and Bucky can just see a pair of round yellow eyes staring back at him in alarm, crouched low to the floor of the compartment. </p><p>“Easy, Tiger, you’re okay,” Steve murmurs to it. The low, undulating noise the cat makes in response probably doesn’t mean that his name is Tiger, given the circumstances. Not that Bucky has bought into this experiment, or anything.</p><p>“That thing is a death trap, Stevie. And a<em> fire hazard,” </em> Bucky admonishes, letting the last two words come out stern and scornful. It’s habit, when he’s talking about fire. “If you were gonna build something, you should’ve waited for me to get home.”</p><p>“Fuck you, I did a great job.”</p><p>“You didn’t, bud. You tried, god help you, but no.” Bucky fishes around behind himself on the sofa cushions until he comes up with the TV remote. “Here, I bet we can find a Youtube tutorial for something that doesn’t burn down or collapse when you breathe on it.”</p><p>Steve makes a face, which Bucky isn’t looking at because he’s trying to remember how to work the new smart-box-whatever that makes Netflix and Youtube play on their very un-smart television. “He’s got a family, Buck, he’s not here forever. I didn’t <em> want </em>something that was built to last.”</p><p>“So he goes home, and we get our own cat. Or we could conduct an elaborate gaslighting campaign to convince all of our friends that we have the world’s shyest pet and he’s just hiding whenever they come over.”</p><p>Bucky hits a button on the remote with emphatic confidence, which turns on the TV, so now he’s halfway there. It being the case that Steve has been alone in the apartment for the last four days, the local news immediately begins to play. Bucky intends to ignore it while he decodes the rest of the remote, but a familiar face catches his eye on screen--he’s got his mouth half-open to tease Steve the way he always does when that particular rich inventor is on the news, but then he actually reads some of the words on screen, and his smile fades.</p><p>“Buck? What…?” Steve isn’t facing the TV, it’s along the same wall that he’s leaning against, but he can see Bucky’s face and that’s enough to warn him that the news is bad before the anchor repeats enough of what’s on the screen that he, too, goes pale and still.</p><p>“--reported missing this morning by his close friend and CEO of Stark Industries, Virginia Rhodes,” the anchor is saying. “Mr. Stark was last seen at the Bridgeport offices of Stark Industries’ medical technologies branch, by his colleagues on the research and development team. We urge anyone with information about the whereabouts, movements or well-being of Mr. Stark to please reach out to the phone number or email address on your screens…”</p><p>“Tony Stark is missing?” </p><p>Steve’s voice is small, tiny and frightened. Helpless. It’s like that, when something terrible happens to someone so far from your own world. Bucky’s heard that voice before, when actors and entertainers they’d liked had passed away suddenly. But this is worse, it’s going to be so much worse, because this isn’t the kind of celebrity whose work they enjoy and for whom there is a general fondness in the house. Steve has always had a thing for Stark; “crush” doesn’t begin to cover it. The man has been his personal hero since before Steve and Bucky even met.</p><p>On top of that, this isn’t quite that kind of news. There’s no finality. There’s hope, and a second shoe waiting to drop. It’s going to drive Steve crazy.</p><p>“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Bucky lies, automatically. Either there are ransom demands ongoing, or the poor guy’s already at the bottom of the bay. Possibly both. </p><p>Steve scoots around until he’s next to Bucky, where he can see the screen. “This happened <em> here?” </em> The anchors have moved on to chat with each other, in that light-but-solemn way that anchors do, about Stark’s history and achievements. “Bridgeport isn’t that big, how...they’ll find him, right?”</p><p>“Definitely,” Bucky asserts again. Steve is leaning into his side, almost clinging to him; Bucky deliberately doesn’t call him on it. Not that Bucky objects, but if he pointed it out then Steve might stop, and honestly they could probably both use the support right now. </p><p>Something catches Bucky’s eye, and he glances down. The cat has finally emerged into the open, and is standing up on its hind feet with its back to them, front paws braced against the edge of the entertainment stand with its nose straining toward the TV screen. Periodically, it gives a loud and strident meow, drowning out the commentary for an instant. </p><p>“Fuck,” Steve whispers, and slumps until his chin is on Bucky’s shoulder. Okay, so maybe he does know he’s clinging. Bucky lets his hand rest on Steve’s knee with a reassuring squeeze. In the background, the cat yells at the TV again. “Just, out of everybody in the world, you know? Why did it have to be Tony Stark?” Across the room, the cat yells louder. “After everything he’s done, for the world, for this town--”</p><p>Steve launches into one of his familiar rants, and Bucky knows he won’t really have to listen to know what it was about, later, so he doesn’t. He already knows how Steve feels about the guy. He’s got more important things to worry about right now, like how he’s going to change the subject to something less upsetting, without offending Steve and just driving him deeper into a fret about this. It’s not like they’re going to find Tony Stark themselves, so it’d be best not to let Steve dwell on it.</p><p>Because he’s looking for something, anything, to call attention to other than bad news, Bucky starts to notice something.</p><p>There’s a pattern.</p><p>There’s a pattern to when the cat is yelling. It yells at the TV, then whips around to yell at Steve, then at the TV again, twice; again at Steve. Every time, it’s right after somebody says--</p><p>“Tony Stark,” Bucky states, apropos of nothing, in the middle of Steve’s rant.</p><p>The cat rounds on him immediately and shouts right at him, a frantic and urgent <em> MREEEEEE. </em></p><p>“What?” Steve sits up and blinks at him, thrown off his groove.</p><p>“Tony,” Bucky says again, holding out a coaxing hand. “Hey, Tony, c’mere.”</p><p>The cat <em> sprints </em>to him, almost spinning out on the carpet in his haste, and plants both front paws in the middle of Bucky’s outstretched palm. Bucky grins, and turns to Steve.</p><p>“Steve, meet Tony,” he announces, smug. Steve’s jaw is hanging open. Tony yells again. “I take it back, apparently some cats <em> do </em>come when called.”</p><p>Tony stares at him, eyes huge, neck scrunched down and ears flat back, as if maybe he’s just realized that in spite of knowing his name, Bucky is not, in fact, an old friend, but is, still, the alarming stranger who had arrived here amidst a lot of loud noises about twenty minutes ago. He steps back down onto the floor, head tucked down in chagrin, and mews lowly.</p><p>“Tony?” Steve tries. The cat looks up at him, and gives the same low, almost mournful mew. Steve reaches out a hand.“Hey, Tony. Are you Tony?”</p><p>Tony stares at Steve for a few seconds, the tip of his tail tapping in agitation. Finally he lets out a tiny, resigned huff, and steps forward. He swipes his cheek across Steve’s hand, just once, and flops to the floor with his back pressed against Steve’s leg. He’s awake, because he was upright zero seconds ago, but seems determined to convince the both of them that he is now sound asleep.</p><p>By the time Steve looks up from this performance, Bucky has figured out how to change the TV over to YouTube, and is laboriously typing out a search for cat-tree tutorials, depressing newscasts successfully banished. Tony’s a weird cat, but he’s a good distraction.</p><p> </p><p>********</p><p> </p><p>The thing about this table is that it’s very tall.</p><p>Tony’s sort of used to this feeling. He’d deny it at gunpoint, but he’s spent a distressing percentage of his life on tiptoes and had gotten pretty adept at mantling up onto countertops in his youth. But now he’s a rich old fuck and he’s got a machine shop in every building he spends more than a day in at a time and, as a result of the above, custom-built feather-touch pull-down shelving in every cabinet above eyeline. So it’s been a while, since the last time he had to do parkour in the kitchen.</p><p>This table, though.</p><p>This fucking table.</p><p>It’s very tall.</p><p>And he hasn’t got the ability, right now, to install any collapsible staircases--or, better, elevators--but he can, currently, do something else.</p><p>Tony hunches down, curling his spine like a wound spring; he’s measuring parabolas with his eyes, calculating force and trajectory, wind resistance, gravity. His paws are shuffling on the tile, scooching him to the best spot to launch.</p><p>High above, an enormous face looms into view past the edge of the table like the sun coming out of an eclipse. Steve stares down at him, blandly observant, still chewing a mouthful of cereal. Tony shakes off the distraction and bunches to spring again. He can’t help one more glance at Steve, though, and Steve's pointedly raised eyebrow breaks his conviction. All the tension drains out of his posture and he settles into a loaf on the cold floor.</p><p>He <em> could </em> jump it. He <em> can </em>jump. He just hasn’t had a lot of practice, yet, and Steve has witnessed what practice he’s had, and Tony will grant him that it’s been quite a spectacle so far, but his judgy eyebrows are nonetheless very hurtful.</p><p>It’s just that the thing about this table is, it’s very tall.</p><p>Tony’s staring at the floor, sulking, because cats are allowed to sulk, it’s expected, and he feels like he’s earned it, anyway. It’s been a hell of a week. Less than a week, even, but still plenty of hell. He’s got a long list of complaints he’d like to submit, but chief among them right now is that everything is <em> so fucking big. </em></p><p>Every room in this apartment is like a gothic cathedral, the table’s as high as a normal ceiling, Steve and his roommate are like <em> kaiju </em> and it’s <em> intensely </em>nerve-wracking. The cardboard castle had been a good refuge from all that--while it was, admittedly, a bit of a death trap, at least he hadn’t felt so incredibly small when curled up in those little compartments. Bucky was right to take it down, though. It was kind of definitely a death trap.</p><p>Ah. Here comes another of Tony’s primary complaints. His brain feels like it’s trying to crawl out of his ears, and at least he’s identified this feeling now but he’s still not used to it: it’s the whiskers. He’s got a giant Proximity Sensor Array on his face and his cat-brain knows how to receive and parse the information it gives him but his human mind can’t figure out what the fuck he’s looking at, because he’s <em> not </em> looking but he can still???? <em> See??? </em> Steve leaning over behind him and reaching out and hand, and…</p><p>And Tony’s not sure if he hates this next part or not, actually.</p><p>Because Tony <em> knows </em>what’s happened to him, he knows he only weighs eight pounds and he’s cat-shaped and Steve is a regular-sized human being. He knows this. But this has only been true for a few days, and his self-image hasn’t caught up. For most of the last thirty years he’s been five-foot-seven and a hundred and eighty-five pounds, and in his mind, he still is. So when something swoops down from behind him and slides under his ribcage and lifts him bodily off the ground without a second’s hesitation or an ounce of resistance, his primal hindbrain is strongly of the opinion that This Cannot Possibly Be Good. Whatever has him is Too Strong, and he is Not Safe. </p><p>But it’s <em> Steve. </em></p><p>And Steve is <em> his. </em></p><p>Tony feels so utterly vulnerable, like this, but he can’t help but go limp and relaxed, overcome with a trust that’s been hard-coded in his soul since before he was born. Steve has him. He’s got Tony’s entire chest cradled in the palm of his hand, and it’s warm and solid and strong and Tony’s body wants to panic while his heart knows that he’s never been safer in his life.</p><p>The floor falls away into the distance--oh, god, the table is very tall and Steve is very much taller, even sitting down--and Steve’s other hand sweeps around under his haunches, politely gathering up his tail along the way. Within a moment, Tony is upside down, cradled against Steve’s chest like a newborn with his paws curled in front of him. He’s staring up at Steve, wide-eyed, only able to think how much warmer it is, up here, and how very much Steve’s recently-slept-in cotton tee smells like home. </p><p>Steve smiles at him, and chuckles softly, and Tony’s so intent on absorbing every detail of that happiness that he feels all of his whiskers strain forward and his nose twitch. Steve only smiles wider. Something large and roughly cylindrical looms up right in front of Tony’s face; his eyesight is all kinds of fucked up, like this, and he can’t focus on it properly, so he almost doesn’t realize that it’s actually Steve’s index finger until--</p><p>“Boop,” Steve whispers. The pad of his finger just touches the end of Tony’s nose, so light he almost can’t feel it.</p><p><em> Oh my god, you dork, </em> Tony thinks. He holds perfectly still, for a moment. Then, lightning-quick, he reaches out with both front paws, clapping them softly onto the sides of Steve’s finger. Steve jumps, slightly, even though he was almost certainly expecting something like this. Tony hasn’t got his claws out, though.</p><p>“Nice kitty,” Steve says, softly, approving. The hand that was doing the boop slips around to the side of Tony’s face and <em> yes. </em></p><p>Tony’s eyes fall shut, his back arches, he’s making biscuits in the air and he’s purring and he does not give a single shit, because this is the part of cat life that makes the rest worth it, this is what he lives for. Steve’s fingers are making huge, slow circles behind his ear, around the base of his skull, down the side of his neck, <em> oh, </em> he’s got the side of his thumb on Tony’s forehead, gently scrubbing the short fur at the top of his face back and forth. Tony is melting, he’s dying, he’s died, he’s in heaven. His whole body is tingly and warm, he’s got chills shooting all the way down his spine to the tip of his tail. He tips his face to the side, crushing his cheek into Steve’s palm, and Steve obediently digs deeper, pressing harder until it’s almost too much. Tony’s tongue flicks out without his quite deciding to let it, and he gets just a couple tastes of warm, salty skin before Steve pulls away.</p><p>“Sweet baby,” he says. His voice is full of fondness and laughter, but he wipes his hand on his shirt before setting Tony down on his lap, paws down this time. </p><p>Tony shakes himself and settles in. Right. Steve probably doesn’t want cat-spit on his hands while he’s trying to eat breakfast. That makes sense. And he needs both hands, obviously, one for the cereal and one for his phone, which he’s just turned back on and is now slowly scrolling through. Tony hooks his paws over the edge of the table and adjusts himself until he can focus on the screen without being in the way of Steve’s arm.</p><p>Oh good, just what Tony had hoped he wasn’t reading: more articles about Tony being missing. Tony hates those. They make Steve get that little wrinkle on his forehead, and it stays for hours, no matter how cute Tony is being, right here in the room. By now Tony’s pretty sure that neither of the human-shaped occupants of this house are going to put two and two together no matter how loud he meows, so he’d rather Steve just didn’t read them.</p><p><em> I’m right here, I’m fine, </em> he tries to think at Steve, even though he knows it won’t work. It’s not like the bond is going to suddenly seal now, five days later. </p><p><em> That’s </em>the thing.</p><p><em> That’s </em>the bullshit, right there.</p><p>Tony had run all the way from downtown up to Greenbriar Park, in the dark, on four legs, disoriented and terrified, on the strength of one hope. The hope that he was running straight to his person. His person could help him, should have been able to help him. He’d been so sure that if he reached their bench and found his other half, he’d be able to look into their eyes, and, and they’d have been <em> whole, </em> sealed, fully bonded, their hearts and minds pouring into each other the way they had always been meant to. No more catching and throwing random feelings: he should have been able to look into Steve’s eyes and project the knowledge of who he was and what had happened straight into Steve’s brain, and would have followed that right up with directions to Strange’s office. He could’ve been back on his own two feet four and a half days ago, and spent that time getting to know Steve properly.</p><p>But.</p><p>Magic.</p><p>Is the worst.</p><p>Instead, he’d arrived at their bench, exhausted and desperate, and found a Steve, and looked into his eyes, and nothing had happened. <em> Not you, then, </em> he’d thought, and settled in to wait for his person to arrive. Only then Steve had started talking, and it was clear, <em> so </em> clear that he was waiting for Tony--and he’d kept calling him his <em> soulmate, </em> like they were in some kind of regency romance--and that was when Tony’s despair had truly started.</p><p>It’s not fucking fair. He did what he was supposed to do. He found his person, he looked into their eyes. That’s how it works, most of the time. People who don’t have sight often bond at the sound of their person’s voice; nature finds a way. Everybody knows the story of Hellen Keller, unable to see, hear, or speak, but bonded at the first touch of her person’s hand as he attempted to greet her in the touch-language that she and her teacher had invented.</p><p>It’s not fair. Steve is his, he knows it, everything adds up, but they can’t bond. Because there’s nothing wrong with Tony’s eyes, he just doesn’t have them right now. He’s not looking at Steve with his own eyes, or speaking to him with his own voice, or touching him with his own hands. Steve’s soul isn’t wired for the input that Tony is giving him. </p><p>He’s wired for the eyes that are looking back at them out of his phone screen right now, but unfortunately, a photo isn’t going to seal them, either. </p><p>Tony jabs out with a paw, frustrated, and hits the back button on Steve’s phone with great prejudice. </p><p>“Hey!” Steve sputters, lifting the phone out of reach, much too late. “Bad kitty!”</p><p>“What’s Trouble up to now?” Bucky asks, strolling into the kitchen.</p><p>“He closed a page on my phone!” Steve exclaims. He’s laughing, a little. He actually sounds kind of impressed. “You little goober, you did that on purpose!”</p><p>Tony takes his first opportunity to hop up onto the table, because Steve is moving too much to sit on now, and he’s probably not going to hold his phone where Tony can see it anymore. He stations himself in the middle of the table, instead, sitting tall with his tail curled around his feet. At least he’s caused a distraction. That’s worth something.</p><p>“Reading anything good?” Bucky asks, blandly, but with an undertone of suspicion.</p><p>“Not really,” Steve answers easily. Too easily, and Bucky clearly hears it.</p><p>“We’ve talked about this, bud,” Bucky says with mild reproach. Tony’s pretty sure they haven’t, actually, he hasn’t left Steve’s side since they saw that news broadcast and he hasn’t heard them mention it again. Steve doesn’t question it, though.</p><p>“You’re not my Ma,” he grouses instead, but sets his phone face down next to his breakfast. He gives Bucky some fantastically sceptical elevator-eyes, and asks: “Going in to the station like that?”</p><p>Bucky leans back against the counter, raising the mug of coffee he’s just poured, hesitates, and blows away the steam instead of taking a sip. He squints at his drink like it’s the coffee’s fault that it’s too hot, then squints at Steve instead. “Going down to the shop like that?” he retorts.</p><p>“I’m not in until eleven.” Steve is still in his pajamas, and his hair is all over the place, there are pillow wrinkles on his face and he’s the softest and most beautiful thing Tony has ever seen.</p><p>Bucky makes a <em> fair enough </em> face and takes a tentative sip of coffee. It doesn’t seem to go well. He sets it down on the counter, presumably to remind himself not to try that again for a bit. “Sanderson,” he says, which is Greek to Tony but Steve nods. “Sometimes a bitch needs to be reminded that repeat violations have a cost besides increased insurance premiums.”</p><p>He raises his left hand and waggles the fingers at Steve--that must be what Steve is questioning, then. Yesterday, when Bucky had come back to the apartment, he’d been wearing long sleeves and a glove on his left hand. Tony had been able to hear the servos--he could never mistake that sound, especially not with the satellite dishes he currently has for ears--but Bucky had clearly been dressed to at least downplay, if not quite successfully keep secret, the fact that one of his arms was built and not grown. </p><p>This morning, he’s dressed professionally: slacks and a white button-down shirt with some sort of logo on the breast that Tony can’t read from here. His left sleeve is rolled up past the elbow, exposing a very obvious, very shiny, very artificial forearm. </p><p>Steve’s face has gone a bit pinched at Bucky’s words, and his mouth opens like he wants to argue some point, but Bucky is watching Tony. Because Tony is lost in thought--he recognizes that model, where has he seen it--and these days when Tony gets interested in something his ears prick up, his eyes go dark, and his head cocks so far to the side that he’s nearly upside down. One of his front paws has come up off the table and is swiping, gently, slowly, shyly, in Bucky’s direction.</p><p>Bucky grins at him.</p><p>“Kitty kitty,” he whispers, almost conspiratorially, holding his hand out toward Tony, catching the morning light on the plates of his fingers and throwing arcs of reflected sunlight all over the kitchen. The glitter is very distracting, actually; Tony feels his ears swivel, the reflexes that come with this body want to catch all those sparkles in his claws and find out what they are later, after he’s got them, and he has to wrestle his own attention back to the relevant question. Steve is watching him too, now He’s smiling again, Tony even catches a flicker of his fond amusement through the bond, but this is <em> important </em> and he needs to <em> see. </em> </p><p>Bucky advances on him, slowly, until he’s almost touching Tony’s forehead with the tip of one silver finger. Tony tips his head back and gets a good look at the layout of the palm plates, and feels every hair on his body stand on end.</p><p>Oh <em> hell </em>no.</p><p>Oh HELL no.</p><p>They’re both cooing at him now, Bucky has backed off a few inches and there’s a general chorus of “aw, baby, it’s okay” but Tony’s back is up like a discount Halloween decoration and he Will Not Be Mollified, because that shit is <em> HammerTech. </em> This, this man, his person’s best friend, Tony’s <em> fatebrother, </em> is living his life grafted to a machine that came out of the brain of Justin Hammer and Tony will not have it, this is not okay, this is incalculably not okay. And, that, there, Tony can read it now: the patch on Bucky’s shirt says <em> Fire Department, </em> what the <em> fuck, </em> this man is a <em> hero </em>and they gave him--?</p><p><em> That arm is not rated for rescue work, </em> Tony realizes, and it’s a bit hard to get a thought that cogent through to the forefront because in Tony’s opinion nothing that comes out of Hammer’s factory is fit to hang a coat on, much less to serve as a functional part of a human being’s body. The fact remains, though, that no fire department, police force, or other emergency response service would ever clear him for active duty with that hunk of junk for a major limb. Several airlines wouldn’t let him sit in an emergency exit row. </p><p>Tony’s not quite sure why that thought bothers him so much. He has no way of knowing whether Bucky was ever a first responder, or had ever wanted to be. Maybe he’s got a desk job at the department and he loves it and he’s very good at it and he lost the arm in a way that was completely unrelated to his job and relatively un-traumatic and not remarkable. That’s possible. Tony doesn’t know of any particular reason for him to need anything nicer than a bottom-of-the-market facsimile.</p><p>It’s fine.</p><p>It’s not a big deal.</p><p>Tony’s going to cut that thing off of him and burn it.</p><p>He can’t right now, because that would require a blowtorch, an industrial-scale incinerator, and thumbs. Frustrated by this knowledge, Tony scoots away from him. He rapidly runs out of table in that direction, so he hops down to the empty chair opposite Steve and then to the floor. The floor sucks, though. He vaults up to the countertop instead. (See, Steve, he can jump. He barely slipped at all.)</p><p>“Aw, you scared the baby away,” Steve mourns, looking after him with sad puppy eyes.</p><p>“He’ll get used to it,” Bucky says flatly. He looks a bit guilty, though. </p><p>“Hey,” Steve sounds serious again, “Fury’s not asking you to do this, is he?”</p><p>“Do what, fine Sanderson to the full extent of the law for his literal crimes against the safety of his employees? Yes? It’s my job?”</p><p>Steve does not look impressed. </p><p>This counter sort of sucks, too, Tony is realizing. It’s all ceramic tile, which is classier and probably cleaner than the linoleum floor, but it’s just as cold.</p><p>“I will give you one fucking guess which thought bothers me more, between going to work guns-out, or leaving any chance that Sanderson thinks he can just keep paying the Dipshit Tax and running his factories however the fuck he wants.” Bucky’s voice is carefully level. “Nobody tells me how to do my job. I have tools, I use them when I need them. Nobody is making me.”</p><p>Tony heads for the warmest thing he can reach without jumping back down.</p><p>“Nobody but Sanderson,” Steve points out. “Is he worth it?”</p><p>“Sanderson is a shitbird,” Bucky agrees heartilly. “The people who work for him and don’t need to end up like me, they’re worth it.”</p><p>Resigned acceptance has only just begun to take shape on Steve’s face, when it is suddenly replaced by panic. “Tony, no!” he shouts, and leaps up so suddenly that Tony, startled, flinches and dunks most of his face in the mug of hot, black coffee that Bucky had unwisely left behind.</p><p>He hadn’t quite managed to steal any before Steve had seen what he was up to, and in his alarm he forgets how his mouth works and fails to lap any up before Steve is already across the kitchen and Tony’s off his feet again, dangling awkwardly with all his legs sticking straight out in midair. Rude. And now Steve’s wetting a tea towel in the sink, he’s going to wipe Tony’s face--Tony hastily starts licking his chops, desperate to get at least that one scrap of blessed caffeine before Steve can take it away. He grumbles about it, his annoyed-cat noises muffled behind the towel, but there’s nothing he can do to stop Steve--at least, not without lashing out at him, and that’s, that’s not happening.</p><p>Bucky laughs, and trades places with Steve to dump out the coffee, rinse his mug in the sink, and pour a fresh cup. Steve takes Tony with him out to the living room, and it’s far away from coffee, but at least he’s still close to Steve.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Couple of new tags to mind! Not an especially severe case, but Tony did have one of those childhoods here, so heads up.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re doing that thing again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mm?” Steve doesn’t look up. He’s busy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your tongue is sticking out,” Darcy continues, anyway, as if he’s expressed interest in her opinion. “Just a tiny bit. Just a lil’ corner. You look like an adorable cartoon of a kid trying to write a letter.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Slander,” Steve deadpans, emotionless. “I look like an adorable cartoon of a competent adult man learning a new skill.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He changes markers and goes back over some of the lines he’d traced earlier in pencil. He doesn’t bother trying to keep his tongue behind his teeth, because that will just make Darcy think she’s won.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ooh, what’re you working on?” She hikes herself halfway up onto the far side of the checkout counter and leans over, tilting toward his work with an eager grin. Steve leans back on his stool and angles his sketchbook away from her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Get outta here,” he scolds, with an extra helping of Brooklyn in it. “You can see it when it’s done.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She drops back onto her feet and lets out a sad huff. “Is that work-related?” she asks, archly, crossing her arms in that way she’s mastered that subtly frames the “Manager” nameplate on her apron. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Funny how you didn’t care about that, until I wouldn’t let you see it.” Steve is unphased. When Darcy actually intends to use her Manager Powers, her whole demeanor changes. This is just pouting. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I cared,” she protests. “I just also wanted to see.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, it’s for work, your majesty,” he teases. He holds up one of the markers he’s been using. “Decorating the new display for these guys." </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her eyes light up as she reads the label and she opens her mouth to, undoubtedly, make another case for her right to peek, but Steve points the marker at her sternly. “No.” He uncaps it and goes back to work. “When it’s done, Darce. It looks stupid right now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She rolls her eyes and struts off to find a shelf that needs re-stocking, not quite pausing as she directs her usual, longing look out of the front windows. It’s mandatory, but it doesn’t slow her down anymore. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The artwork absorbs most of his attention, but he’s watching, now, out of the corner of his eye. Listening. To her credit, Darcy almost manages to wait him out. It’s nearly five minutes before soft, inconspicuous footsteps pass a little too close to his shoulder. He’s ready, though, and smoothly rotates the swivel-seat of his stool to keep his work hidden without breaking stride. He raises his eyes to give her a dry, amused glare over the edge of the page. She throws up her hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No trust! I’m hurt, Rogers. I thought we were friends.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Darcy Lewis, I trust you to remember what I’m allergic to when you order lunch for the shop, to watch my house if I have a family emergency out of town, and to say only things that are fair and accurate when the store owner asks you about me. I also trust you to replace the sugar by the breakroom coffee maker with salt, to snoop, constantly, especially if you’ve been asked not to, and to taze my soulmate the instant I meet him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That was </span>
  <em>
    <span>one time!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> She squawks in protest. Her eyes flit to the front windows again. “And he was fine!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just a little singed,” Steve agrees with a nod. “I’m sure that was a very exciting way to bond. Jane probably didn’t mind at all.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s over it,” Darcy waves him off, dismissive. “He was freaking me out, you didn’t see the face he made. Guys aren’t allowed to stumble up drunk and make that face at my girl.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They were bonding, Darce. People make that face when they bond.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And it was freaky! Have you ever seen a bonding?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Darcy,” Steve’s deadpan is the driest it’s been all day. “I saw </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>bonding.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She grins, hugely, and he realizes that he’s just fallen into her trap. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh yeah, you did,” she says, cheekily, extremely obvious in the fact that she hadn’t actually forgotten. She doesn’t look out the windows, now, but sets one elbow on the corner of the checkout counter and leans into it so that she’s flush with the edge but still facing Steve, just as the bell rings over the door. Hurried footsteps cross the shop and Steve doesn’t turn to look, maintaining eye contact. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Darcy never looks up, either, simply leaning deftly to the side at the perfect moment to catch a kiss on the cheek from the slight, rather harried-looking young man who’s just come in as he breezes past them toward the staff room. The man never takes his eyes off his phone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, Harris,” Steve sighs, a little bit defeated, and more hostile than the newcomer deserves, because Darcy is still giving him that smug look.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harris spins on his heel just outside the staff room door. “Oh! Steve,” he salutes awkwardly with the paper cup of coffee in his other hand. “Sorry, I just, I’m. Deadlines. Later!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He knocks open the door with his elbow and vanishes into the staff room. Where he doesn’t actually belong, since it’s, y’know, for staff, but whatever. The worst reaction he’s likely to get if Dr. Blake stops in to check on the place is a ribald comment, and Harris handles those a lot better than Steve would. Probably helps that he shares a brain with Darcy, when it comes to that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Darcy watches this all play out, a fond softness overtaking her smug expression. Then, she smacks a hand down on the counter and makes a huge production of standing up straight, one joint at a time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Anyways, good talk,” she says airily. “I’m off to the back for a while, cover the floor.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve rolls his eyes. “Leave that boy alone, he’s deadlines, didn’t you hear?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know my guy. He’ll deadlines better for the rest of the day if he Darcies a little bit first.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That wasn’t even English!” Steve calls after her, squinting in displeasure at her theatrical sashaying. She yells something back at him, but it’s muffled by the staff room door. The door’s not fully soundproof, though, so Steve turns up the volume on the in-store stereo, just a few notches. Not that he expects anyone to get </span>
  <em>
    <span>too </span>
  </em>
  <span>frisky back there, but any noises that make it through the door are going to sound worse out of context. So much worse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Never again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anyway. He scoots a little closer to the register--farther from the staff room, but also with a better view to the front doors--and lays out his work properly now that there’s nobody to hide it from. It’s the middle of a Monday afternoon, so he’s not really expecting anyone to come in. People with day jobs and summer school aren’t out yet, and the rush of parents and students looking to start their summers with a creative project has already tapered off. It’s just Steve, Spotify, and the rack of air plants next to the register for the next fifteen minutes, in all likelihood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He finishes the curling sweep of Tony’s tail with a brush-tipped black marker, and gives it a moment to dry, before uncapping the </span>
  <em>
    <span>other </span>
  </em>
  <span>marker, the one that had caught Darcy’s attention before. They’re new, these ones, and they’re wildly expensive. Or at least they’re solidly out of Steve’s budget, and he’d never be able to justify getting one to play with himself. Dr. Blake likes it when they make sample works, though, to help people see, real and in person, what the products actually do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Once the ink of his last drawing has lost its wet shine, Steve carefully traces over it, covering the full surface of the work with the new marker. The ink goes on yellowish, semi-transparent and a little thick. When he’s finished, it dries almost instantly. The yellow sheen vanishes in a single breath, and his last doodle of Tony fades slightly, like he’s turned down the opacity, or like a thin sheet of paper has been laid over it. The previous drawings fade a little more. At this point he’s got a little trail of kitties just over halfway across the page, fading out to near invisibility where they began.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He picks up his pencil, and starts the next frame.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Giffing pen is...Steve has a lot of thoughts about it. It’s fun, but in his mind it most definitely belongs in a special corner of the store with all the other things that </span>
  <em>
    <span>can </span>
  </em>
  <span>be used to make great art, but are really hard to use that way, and don’t work as well as traditional methods, but are still, honestly, kind of fun. It’s an absolutely ridiculous way to try to animate anything complex, though. There’s very little chance to lay out lines of motion or other handy landmarks, because anything the special ink touches is going to be permanent. Each frame has to be drawn in its entirety and finalized before the next can be started: no pencil tests, no editing. It’s like doing a crossword with a fountain pen: if you’re really, really good at it, you’ll be fine. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve wouldn’t say he’s any kind of good at this--if he’d been smart he probably would have started in the top left corner instead of the right, for one thing--but it looks like it’s turning out okay. He’s got a wide path sketched across the paper, well outside of inking range, with some hash marks dotted along the way to help him keep track of his planned pace, and the places with lots of squash and stretch.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony’s at the apex of a jump, in the frame that Steve has just started, so he’s all scrunched up small--there will be a little cluster of frames all together here, to make him float weightlessly before he begins to fall again. That’s the plan, anyways. Steve won’t get a chance to see it run until he’s finished the whole thing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He traces the round shape of Tony’s body, simplified, a sweet little blob with nubby little paws and a big, boofy tail. Steve puts a bit of backward curve into his spine, and decides to make his own life difficult by having Tony execute a sideways roll at the top of his jump. That’s next frame’s problem for now, though. Satisfied, he swaps to the black marker and starts filling in Tony’s outline, leaving careful negative spaces for his white markings. He’s not letting himself dwell on each frame, there’s no room for perfect in a 45-frame animation that he wants to be done with before the evening rush. It’ll probably end up a hot mess, but it should get the point of the pens across. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The quick, simple way he’s drawing brings a sort of free feeling with it. There’s a soothing rhythm to it, a mechanical process that’s too fast to put any care into and too slow to be frantic. He falls into an easy, contented place. He feels </span>
  <em>
    <span>slow,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>peace,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>belong.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Slow, peace, belong.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve’s heart swells in his chest. The sudden surge of elation almost knocks the echo off-kilter at once, but he gentles it into a soft longing, and a welcome.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Welcome, longing.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, thank god. It’s been nearly a week since he’d last shared a rapport this stable with his soulmate. They’d shared the park, the bench, the dawn, excitement, </span>
  <em>
    <span>ready</span>
  </em>
  <span>, yearning--and then he hadn’t showed. Since then he’s only thrown Steve short, sharp spikes of feeling, the kind that spills over across the void when it gets to be too much for one soul to hold, and everything Steve has caught lately has been both confusing and worrying. Frustration, sadness, anger. Fear. Sulking. Petty rage. Justified rage. Isolation. There’s no room for an answer, when a soul is throwing out feelings like that. All Steve can do is catch them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is different. This is better. They’ve reached the same place, together, separately, and found one another waiting. The space between them is narrower when they’re looking in the same direction. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve leans into his own feelings of relief, gently, not pulling away from their shared peace until he knows that his soulmate has felt it and followed him. A strong sense of </span>
  <em>
    <span>reunion </span>
  </em>
  <span>comes back to him, as he opens himself to his soulmate’s next feeling. He smiles. It is a reunion, almost, like they’re in adjacent rooms. Too far to touch, but close enough to know. Steve sends back his love, and catches some in return, then tries to send the park again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The park is met with regret. It resonates, he’s caught it and knows what it is, what Steve means by it--but he’s not returning it. Steve swallows heavily and echoes the regret with all his heart. It’s just a confirmation of what he’d already known. The park isn’t going to work. For reasons that are surely too complex to share this way, his soulmate won’t be able to find him there. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A vast, hollowing guilt swamps over him, his soulmate is </span>
  <em>
    <span>so sorry</span>
  </em>
  <span>--Steve receives it with a mix of disappointment and forgiveness. There’s no room for a polite lie, he can’t pretend he doesn’t mind. He can only share the truth, but at least there can be no doubt that everything else he feels is just as real. He loves his soulmate, and he wants to find him. A wave of that same love washes back to him, with frustrated longing in the undercurrents, and an edge of ferocity and surety that’s new, for him, and then...Steve feels the tug of his soulmate trying to lead him somewhere difficult.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The connection wobbles, immediately, Steve’s despair nearly washes it out before he can begin to follow. He knows this game. They’d played it before, and it had worked, except that it didn’t, because Steve’s soulmate wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>at </span>
  </em>
  <span>the park, so now they have to do it </span>
  <em>
    <span>again. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Steve takes a deep breath, and shuts off all of his own feelings. Just for now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has to </span>
  <em>
    <span>listen.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Their bond isn’t sealed. Their souls haven’t knit together, not yet, but they reach for each other, still, and the edges just brush, and it’s just enough and not enough. Enough to carry a feeling. An impression. A </span>
  <em>
    <span>thought </span>
  </em>
  <span>is too complex, too big, the layers of cognition required to form </span>
  <em>
    <span>words </span>
  </em>
  <span>are too heavy for the gossamer bridge that stretches between them now. The only things they can share are those that are soul-deep, intrinsic, unconscious, and even </span>
  <em>
    <span>that--</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The spikes are one thing. An experience too sharp and huge and heavy to hold, thrown, ejected, almost in self-preservation--those land like thunderbolts. Always clear. Instantly known. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Here, the knowing is in the echoing, the resonance of feeling something </span>
  <em>
    <span>together.</span>
  </em>
  <span> These emotions are no bigger than any other, no stronger, no clearer. They have to catch each other’s feelings by the coat tails and try to follow along, guess what they’re seeing by its faint outline and mimic it, correctly, before it’s gone, before the connection drops out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A pure back-and-forth, a give and take of simple feelings, they can do. Steve knows the edges of his soulmate’s heart almost without looking for them. He can follow him from love to regret to longing to hope, without really thinking about the process. Years of practice. But a </span>
  <em>
    <span>place--</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A thought is too big. They can’t think, </span>
  <em>
    <span>here’s a nice landmark, everyone knows it, meet me here</span>
  </em>
  <span>. They can’t think,</span>
  <em>
    <span> I bet you know what the Eiffel Tower looks like. I bet you know what Central Park looks like.</span>
  </em>
  <span> They can’t share the </span>
  <em>
    <span>knowledge </span>
  </em>
  <span>of a place. Only a </span>
  <em>
    <span>sense </span>
  </em>
  <span>of place. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is why it’s quite rare to meet a soulmate by arrangement.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>is like playing charades. With the lights off. From opposite sides of an auditorium. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yet, once upon a time, Steve had caught such an insistent sense of </span>
  <em>
    <span>searching,</span>
  </em>
  <span> for so long, that he’d tried. He couldn’t say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>here’s the view from the overlook I pass on my run every morning.</span>
  </em>
  <span> But he could think about that view, try to put himself in that place and moment, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel </span>
  </em>
  <span>it.  They’d dropped dozens of connections at that point, maybe hundreds, his soulmate trying doggedly to figure out where he’d gone and echo it, without success--until at last the specific feeling of </span>
  <em>
    <span>crisp, morning air burning in his lungs, heavy with the smell of fallen leaves</span>
  </em>
  <span> had rung between them like a bell and sent them both into a giddy spiral of victory.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It had taken them years, literal years, to build from there into something they could act on. The day that the actual image of the clock tower had bounced right back to him, clear and confident, Steve had let out a single, broken sob--right in the middle of breakfast, right across the table from Bucky, who had nearly called an ambulance because Steve was stock-still and unresponsive and apparently broken on every level. A complete, full-color visual like that could never, ever have echoed so clearly, unless his soulmate had </span>
  <em>
    <span>been to that place.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And yet, somehow, Steve is still alone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Steve isn’t thinking about that, because he’s not thinking about anything, because his soulmate is trying to show him something.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s the faintest sense of </span>
  <em>
    <span>space </span>
  </em>
  <span>and Steve chases it, trying to catch up before it gets away, feeling the </span>
  <em>
    <span>vast, freeing openness </span>
  </em>
  <span>of the outdoors--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And it’s gone. He’s gone. Steve got it wrong, and now he’s alone in his own head again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sucks in a deep breath through clenched teeth. He’d almost swear he can feel the ghost of an echo in his disappointment, but they’re out of sync, now, too turbulent to catch hold of that fragile place. He blinks, hard and fast, keeping his eyes dry by sheer force of will. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve glances around the shop, guiltily, but it’s still just him and the air plants. Nobody has come in, and Darcy hasn’t come back. He blows out a frustrated sigh and digs into the next sketch. If his lines are a little harsher for the last five or six frames of the animation, hopefully nobody but him will be able to tell. He lays them down, one by one, relaxing by degrees, although he never quite makes it back to his former state of calm. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, the last frame is on paper and coated with the special ink. After referring back to the instruction sheet that had been packed with the Giffing pen, he carefully traces a circle encompassing the entire area he’s drawn on. There’s no need for the circle to be perfectly round, as long as it’s unbroken and he gets everything inside. Then, a single, simple rune: a right-facing triangle, with its points just touching the outer ring. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Play.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The ink dries, and all of his drawings vanish. Then, starting from the beginning, they appear in sequence, each flashing up for exactly one-twelfth of a second before being smoothly replaced by the next. Tony appears in the top right corner of the page, takes a few strolling steps, spots a butterfly and springs after it, scrambling across the page with cartoonish abandon. He makes his little jump, does his little turn, and bounds away off the edge of the page. The animation begins again, the same instant that it ends, every time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a mess, obviously, it’s rushed, both in the execution and the pace of the movement, it’s wobbly, you wouldn’t know Tony was the same cat from frame to frame if not for the ostentatious moustache--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh my goooooooooooooood!” Darcy squeals, about two inches from Steve’s ear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve’s whole body convulses. He nearly flings the entire sketchbook across the shop, but manages to snatch it back into his hands before it can frisbee through any plate glass windows or product displays.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Foul!” he protests, “You are </span>
  <em>
    <span>fired,</span>
  </em>
  <span> get out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You have no power here, mortal,” she scoffs, then resumes grinning maniacally and making grabby hands at the sketchbook. “Kitty! I want it!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well it’s for the shop, so you’re in luck. You get to see it all the time,” he says, magnanimously. He tears out the page and hands it to her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yessssssssss,” her whole face is lit up with glee. It’s terrifying. “We’re gonna go put this up, c’mon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve allows himself to be dragged across the shop by one arm. Darcy wants to put his work up in the front window, which Steve protests loudly. Eventually they compromise and hang it on the endcap of the aisle where the markers live, with a little display of the relevant pens on the shelf beneath. Steve strongly suspects that it’s going to be in the window by the time he gets in tomorrow, but at least until then he can pretend he has some say in the matter. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Darcy almost whispers, reverent. She hasn’t taken her eyes off that cat in a worryingly long time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In spite of himself, Steve smiles. “He’s a pretty sweet little guy, I’ll give you that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Darcy clutches at her imaginary pearls. “Did </span>
  <em>
    <span>Steve Rogers</span>
  </em>
  <span> just say something nice about his own art? Call the press! The world needs to know! I’m so proud, I’m going to tell everyone I was there when it happened--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not the </span>
  <em>
    <span>drawing,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Steve laughs, unaware of the mistake he’s about to make. “I meant Tony.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The kitty has a name?” Darcy asks, brightly. “Does he have a backstory? Little friends? Steven have you written a tiny adorable comic that you’re not sharing?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Steve laughs again, about to make it worse. He pulls out his phone and turns on the screen. It’s already open to a folder of reference shots he’d been using for the animation. It’s only as he tips the screen toward his manager and her eyes light upon the image of Tony, sleeping upside-down on what is unmistakably his and Bucky’s terrible old sofa, that he realizes he might be fucking up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Darcy gasps so dramatically she sucks half the air out of the room. She snatches Steve’s phone and starts flipping through the album without a word. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Behind Steve, the staff room door opens, and the long-suffering voice of Darcy’s soulmate rings across the shop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My girlfriend’s going to steal your cat. Sorry, Steve.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>*****</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Tony isn’t physically able to weep right now, which is a shame.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>A crying shame,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thinks, somewhat hysterically. He shoves himself halfway up onto the desk and wraps both forelegs around Steve’s hand where it rests on the mouse, and tries valiantly to drag him toward the problem.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve fails to be helped, again, instead heaving a huge, frustrated sigh, again, and takes his hand off the mouse to drop his palm on Tony’s head, again. His petting is a bit more forceful than the last time, as has been the pattern for the last hour and a half. By this point he’s shot way past affection and is pushing the far end of the noogie scale; Tony’s teeth rattle a little on this one. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony’s frustrated enough himself by now that you’d think they would echo, but it probably wouldn’t help him if they did. Then they’d just be mad together. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve moves his cursor down to the next row, and puts a number in the cell. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The total that the number was supposed to contribute to doesn’t change. Fifteen minutes ago he’d highlighted a group of rows in this column, to be included toward the total elsewhere on his spreadsheet. The number of rows he’d selected was several less rows than he is currently at. He hasn’t noticed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He really, really needs to notice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony makes another lunge for Steve’s mouse-hand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve kicks his rolling chair back from the desk and spins it around until he’s facing the bedroom door. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Baby, I love you, but Daddy’s busy,” Steve tells him through gritted teeth. He flips Tony over and grinds the knuckles of both hands into the sides of Tony’s neck when he says it. Not as gently as he usually would, but far from hard enough to qualify as animal abuse. It doesn’t hurt. It would’ve felt nice, out of context.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And, Tony isn’t used to getting a “baby, I love you” at the start, in this context.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And really, there hasn’t been a context like this in over twenty years. Nearly thirty.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s just.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Daddy’s busy.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony freezes in place. He’s on his back in the valley between Steve’s thighs, and Steve is very big and Steve is leaning over him and Steve has got those massive forklift hands around Tony’s entire head and throat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve sits back, sucking in a sharp breath. His hand jerks toward his own chest, reflexively covering his heart. He’s got that pinched look on his face. The particular set of stress-wrinkles that Tony has noticed, sometimes. Times when Tony has been yelling for an hour but he still can’t make anyone understand. Times when Tony hears Bucky trying to talk Steve into taking him back to the vet and having him fixed. Times when Tony gets overwhelmed and has to hide in a cabinet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Times when Tony has to think about </span>
  <em>
    <span>Daddy’s Busy,</span>
  </em>
  <span> apparently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And honestly those aren’t even the actual words that anyone had ever, ever used, in the original context. Really--Tony tells himself, as he uses Steve’s distraction to quickly right himself and leap off of Steve’s knees and onto the bed, then vanish into the space between Steve’s pillows and the wall--there’s absolutely no reason why hearing that should make him feel anything that would make Steve make that face. This isn’t anything like those times.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shit,” Steve says aloud. He’s still got one hand over his heart, and he runs the other through his hair. When Tony peeks his nose out from behind the pillow, Steve’s eyes look a little wet. He sniffles. “I see how it is. When I’m trying to work you’re all over me, but my fella starts throwing me a bad day, and you’re out. That’s fine,” Steve heaves a put-upon sigh and turns back to his work. “Guess I’m not really the one who needs a hug, anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony feels a little bit bad about that, but if Steve doesn’t want to catch bad feelings, then Tony needs space. Just for a minute. Just to get his bearings, and remember that he is definitely not in his father’s study, or workshop, or office, and nobody has been drinking, nor has anybody’s secretary turned up in a room where Tony wouldn’t think she ought to be. Nobody is hustling him a little too roughly out of any rooms and refusing to give a better explanation than </span>
  <em>
    <span>Daddy’s busy, </span>
  </em>
  <span>regardless of the word choice--and this is </span>
  <em>
    <span>absolutely </span>
  </em>
  <span>not one of the days when nobody had been there to hustle him away in time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s okay. He’s safe. He’s with Steve, and Steve, despite his ridiculous Millennial habit of addressing animals as his children, is </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>Tony’s father. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony takes a few deep breaths and watches Steve settle back in at the computer. Tony can’t read the numbers on the screen anymore, not from this distance. That’s probably better for his sanity, in the long run. Trying to meow in a way that says </span>
  <em>
    <span>you’re doing Excel wrong </span>
  </em>
  <span>is apparently not any easier than </span>
  <em>
    <span>it is I, on TV again, my own face, I am the missing man, please help me.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not even that Steve doesn’t understand spreadsheets, or the things he’s supposed to be doing with them. A couple of hours ago he’d shown a lot more understanding of the concept of Accounts Receivable than Tony has ever bothered to develop. It’s just that Steve left for work almost fourteen hours ago, made a brief reappearance for dinner, left again carrying a backpack, and hadn’t come back again until after ten at night. He’d then sat right down at the computer, and hasn’t gotten up since.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, he’s staring at the screen like he can’t even see it. His eyes are blank, focused on something a hundred miles away, and a little bit red around the rims. Most of the stress-lines Tony unintentionally shared with him have smoothed back out, but he’s still got that little crease between his eyebrows. Tony watches him drag his attention back to the numbers with visible effort. The wrinkle gets deeper. Ah, there’s hope. Steve can see that there’s a problem, but will he be able to see what the problem </span>
  <em>
    <span>is.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony lies down with his chin on his paws, putting the bulk of Steve’s screen behind the edge of the desk, from his vantage point. Steve clicks on something, pokes at the keyboard, clicks on something else, runs a hand through his hair, pokes the keys again. Then, with a loud huff, he shoves his chair back again and stands up. Tony flinches, a little. He’s okay, though. It’s fine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve plucks the earbuds out of his ears, turns in place and falls straight forward--Tony jerks to his feet and takes a quick step out of the shadows, but before he can figure out how the hell he’s going to do anything about this, Steve has put his arms out and caught himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s doing pushups.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Trying to clear his head, probably. This explains a lot about his terribly gorgeous arms. Tony sits back with his tail around his paws and watches. For science. It’s very educational.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>About six pushups in, Tony hears something. Faintly. One of his ears swivels toward it automatically. It’s a very familiar little sound. It’s not loud enough for Steve to pick up on, clearly, based on the complete lack of falter in his steady, mechanical movement. Up and down. Rise and fall. Body taut and straight from head to toes, showing no strain or exertion at all, just the smooth flexing of his muscles...flexing...and bulging…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>What </span>
  </em>
  <span>is that </span>
  <em>
    <span>noise?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony turns away from the Steve’s Biceps Show in irritation and immediately recognizes what he’s been hearing. The screen on Steve’s laptop is lit up with an incoming Skype call--Tony and his enormous ears can just pick up the sound of the default ringtone filtering through Steve’s earbuds, now that nobody is wearing them. Tony hops up onto the desk to get a better look. The call times out just as he gets there, but then immediately begins again. Someone named “Horse_Drawn_Carter” is calling. Their profile picture appears to be a selfie taken by Steve, with a woman about his age leaning over his shoulder. Steve is smiling, like a normal person. She’s got her eyes wide open and crossed and is giving the camera a wild, open-mouthed grin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony’s ears prick up. He hasn’t got a lot of context to go on, here, but this could be a chance to meet another person from Steve’s inner circle. Family, maybe. So far all he’s got is Bucky, and a somewhat foreboding promise that someone from Steve’s workplace wants to come over some evening this week. She likes cats. Apparently. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Besides which, it’s a bit past midnight, now, and this person has called more than once. Either they’re a true kindred spirit to Tony, or they’ve got important things to say. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Very carefully, Tony leans down and touches the tip of his nose to the track-pad. He’s tried this a couple of times, by now, and he knows doing it this way is easier than using his paws. He has to keep looking up to find the cursor and then back down to move it, and the call times out again before he gets it where he needs it, but “Horse_Drawn_Carter” is determined and on the third call, he steps authoritatively on the left-click button and presses the little green phone icon. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The screen fills with smudged pixels, which quickly resolve into the same face from the profile picture, minus the silly expression. Her mouth is moving, at first, but before the audio fidelity can catch up enough for Tony to make out any words, she’s paused. She stares into the screen. Her head twists on her neck, like a confused owl, and her eyebrows draw together.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Steve?” </span>
  <span>Tony can just hear her say,</span>
  <span> “...I rang Steve, I know I did…” </span>
  <span>She peers at something lower down on her screen, then sits back again. </span>
  <span>“I did, it’s right there, machine says Steve, should be Steve. Steven, my love, where are you hiding?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh no. Is this an ex? Did Tony just pick up a call from a clingy ex? Surely Steve isn’t seeing anyone, currently. Not now, when he’d been expecting to bond. That wouldn’t have been fair to her, and Steve doesn’t seem like the type. And Steve would have had the sense to block an ex that liked to call in the wee hours of the morning, if they weren’t on good terms anymore, right?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony checks the outgoing camera feed and realizes that all she can see is an empty room, with a corner of his furry shoulder along one edge. He shuffles himself sideways until he’s center frame, and gives a short, demanding meow. </span>
  <em>
    <span>State your business. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her mouth drops open in delighted shock. </span>
  <span>“Hello, who’s this then? Do you know where Steve is, young man?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony twists around, folding his neck backward over his shoulder and then wobbling slightly when it doesn’t bend quite far enough. He turns sideways, instead, like a smart cat would, and finds Steve still steadily rising and falling, right where Tony had left him. Hm. If he hung up on her now, Steve would never know this happened. But, Steve is the only one in the room who knows who this woman is, and what the appropriate reaction to her call should be. Tony looks at the laptop, and at Steve again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He bunches his muscles and springs--not a jump, just extending himself up over the keyboard to get his paws around the top edge of the screen. It’s not an easy grip, but he sticks with it, fumbling a few times and surely shaking the shit out of the camera, to say nothing of the built-in microphone that’s roughly level with where his paws are scrabbling. The hinges are stiff enough that he’s having a hard time budging them with his laughably insignificant body weight, but he’s got to be careful not to pull too hard, either, he doesn’t want to close the screen, just--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There. The hinges give, by just a few degrees, and when he checks the camera again it’s showing a lower angle on Steve’s room. Including the backs of Steve’s shoulders, bobbing up into frame at the apex of each pushup. In the larger display, the stranger has her hands up as if to catch something before it can fall. She probably thought she was about to watch a first-person view of Steve’s computer plummeting to its death on the floor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her shoulders hunch on a suppressed laugh, once she realizes what’s on screen. </span>
  <span>“Well, one mystery solved. Steve? Listen to my voice, Steven,”</span>
  <span> she drops into a false baritone, making imploring grabby-hands at the camera.</span>
  <span> “I haven’t got all day, love. Steve!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony reaches a paw toward the earbuds, but stops. That’s likely to end in disaster. He’d had a rather embarrassing encounter with the pull-strings of Steve’s hoodie on their second day together, and he knows better than to let his feline lizard-brain near anything string-shaped, now. So, rather than try to unplug anything and end up eating Steve’s only headphones, he just. Yells.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The lady in the computer laughs at him and calls </span>
  <span>“STEVE!”</span>
  <span> again, a bit louder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“MOW!” Tony reinforces her tiny broadcast.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve’s very very slightly labored breathing breaks off into a soft, chanting murmur; a conscious effort to ignore Tony. Rude.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Steeeve!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maaaoow!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The muttering rises in pitch and volume until actual words start to form. “...ngth...thirty-four, thirty five…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Steve?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mrrrrw?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thirty-seven, </span>
  <em>
    <span>not now Tony,</span>
  </em>
  <span> thirty-nine--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh for heaven’s sake, Rogers!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony’s ears drop flat and his head sinks below the level of his shoulders. His tail twitches. How </span>
  <em>
    <span>dare.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He gathers himself up again, this time facing out, gripping the very edge of the desk with his toes, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>launches. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a moment of perfect, weightless soaring. He’s in flight. Too focused on his irritation to fuck it up by overthinking, his body adjusts automatically: his tail held out to keep his path true, his feet tucking up for a smooth ascent and dropping perfectly into place, joints unlocked, to stick the landing--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fort--GAH!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--right between Steve’s shoulder blades. He may have used his claws, there, just a little, running on autopilot and all. Only for a second. Steve has trimmed them, anyway, they’re not </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>sharp.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve collapses out from under him on impact. His right arm buckles first and he comes down hard on that side, ending up with his left palm and knee planted on the ground but his right shoulder and cheek pressed into the carpet. It puts his back at a sharp angle, and his shirt starts to ride up, carrying Tony with it. Tony slips rapidly toward Steve’s terrified and confused face until he finds himself fetched up half-draped around Steve’s neck. He meows, very softly, mostly out of shock.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay,” Steve says, with a breathless laugh. “Okay, you win. Fifty is too many. His highness is lonely.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a lurch and the ground rushes away into the distance. Tony tenses, but Steve is keeping him steady, big hands gentle behind Tony’s shoulders and the base of his spine. When he comes to a stop, Steve is standing up. Tony is draped around his shoulders like a fur stole. A small, living, slightly alarmed stole. Steve lumbers off back toward his desk--Tony is sure he’s going to fall off, but actually it’s a lot easier to keep his balance like this than he’d expected. He just has to sink his weight into the back of Steve’s neck and he’s pretty secure, as long as Steve doesn’t lean unexpectedly to the side.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What did you do to the computer, you goose?” Steve laughs. Tony isn’t listening, because Steve is also absent-mindedly scratching Tony’s ears. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve eases himself smoothly down into the desk chair and tilts the laptop screen back up so that he can see it--revealing a full-screen Skype call. The woman has her elbows propped on her own desk and her chin resting on her hands, fingers laced together. She’s staring placidly at them with her eyebrows raised.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Then </span>
  </em>
  <span>Tony nearly falls off of Steve’s shoulders, because Steve jumps about a mile straight up in the air. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh my God, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Peggy?!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Steve yelps. Tony rubs his cheek against Steve’s in apology and reassurance, once he’s got his balance back--although the spike of </span>
  <em>
    <span>shock </span>
  </em>
  <span>that had shot through the bond was chased by a bright flicker of</span>
  <em>
    <span> delight,</span>
  </em>
  <span> so this is not, apparently, someone Tony should have hung up on. “What? How?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She says something in reply but the headphones are still plugged in and Steve isn’t wearing them. Steve notices the problem at once, and, mercifully, goes for the expedient solution of snatching up the cord and unplugging them instead of putting them on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry, one more time?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I said I think your little friend there must have picked up,” she says again, waving a hand at the part of her screen where Tony’s picture is. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve huffs and scratches his ears a little more. “Sounds about right. Menace,” he says to Tony. “He’s always getting into computer trouble. He tried to email one of my professors, once.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, Tony had tried to use the open email draft to beg Steve to take him to a competent Warlock, Witch, Wizard or Sorcerer for immediate de-catting. That...had not worked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s up?” Steve goes on, sounding slightly concerned. “Isn’t it early, there? Is there an emergency?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not as early as it is there,” She counters with a note of reproach. “Nearly half six, in London town. I was just sitting down with my coffee and noticed you online, so I thought I’d take advantage of whatever has already ruined your sleep schedule. Except between the cat you didn’t have the last time I called and the change of scenery, I’d begun to think I must have dialled the wrong Steve.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Got a lot of other Steves in your rolodex, Carter?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I might,” she says, cocked eyebrow rising in challenge. “Where have you gone, though? This isn’t your room.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It is now,” Steve’s shoulder goes a little tense under Tony’s ribs. “I finally got Bucky to switch with me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy’s face tips forward and she presses her fingers into her temples, in a gesture that reminds Tony viscerally of Pepper. Steve’s hand flutters toward his own chest, again, but Tony manages to cut that train of thought before it can get too painful.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I cannot believe he let you win that bloody argument,” she mutters. Her accent is a lot easier to hear, now that her audio is playing at normal volume. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You think I’m wrong?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think you’ve got valid points, but I’m amazed that James would permit you to fall on your own sword like that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think he was tired of listening to me go on about it, is all,” Steve smiles a little bashfully, then rolls his eyes. “And there’s a mandatory re-negotiation scheduled for after I graduate.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She looks incredulous. “Graduate? Not even going to wait for you to put the degree to use at a new job, with a new salary?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>New</span>
  </em>
  <span> salary, she says, as if I earn a salary now,” Steve scoffs, and she waves him off.</span>
  <em>
    <span> You know what I mean,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she says with her face. “I guess, depending on how good the </span>
  <em>
    <span>new salary</span>
  </em>
  <span> is, we might have to get a new place if I get a new job, and…” Steve trails off, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Had to give him some kind of compromise, if I wanted him to take it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Woe, the accursed master suite, with its large closets and sunny windows. Such a place of suffering.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony cocks his head in confusion, sidling in a little tighter around Steve’s neck. He’s poked his head into Bucky’s room before. Admittedly his sense of scale is unreliable right now, but it hadn’t seemed that much different from Steve’s, other than being at the corner of the building and therefore having more windows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve’s hand rises automatically to start skritching under Tony’s chin. Tony lets the conversation go on without him. Other people can worry about who lives in what bedroom and which one is bigger. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If it was a suite, it would have its own bathroom,” Steve is arguing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, that’s the most important untruth about what I said.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Listen, when you want to move in someplace with us, then you can have an opinion about house politics,” He takes his hand away from skritching to point sternly at the screen. Criminal action. Tony swipes a paw after him, sadly, but this does not bring back the hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, thank you, you two are made for each other.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Heaven forbid,” Steve laughs, and Tony has lost the main thread, here, but he agrees with that much. Steve is his. Bucky can get somebody else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How are your classes, love?” she asks, and Steve doesn’t blink at the endearment. Hm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They fall into an easy conversation about mundane things, for a while. Steve is taking Bookkeeping 105 this term--a specially condensed night course at the local university for continuing education students. It’s a semester’s worth of disparate accounting classes smashed together into two-hour blocks of study four nights a week for eight weeks, so it’s going to take up most of his summer. Steve is undaunted, though, his boss at the art store is very accommodating and supportive of this move (according to Steve), so his schedule there isn’t too heavy (according to Steve) and he’s always home in plenty of time to get ready and get down to campus (according to Steve). This workload is definitely not going to burn him out at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy doesn’t seem entirely fooled, but doesn’t challenge him. She trades a few quick stories about people she’s met at work and about her person, someone called Angie. (So the “love” thing is okay, then. No worse than the titles Tony gives to his friends, after all.) Angie is having trouble getting used to Metric, apparently, and keeps pinging Peggy through their bond to find out how big, hot, far, and heavy things are. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do tell me you’re still finding time for art, Steven,” she says wistfully, after Steve has finished laughing at her helpless expat partner.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I do lots of art at the shop,” Steve counters, defensive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your own. Something for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve shrugs. “Sometimes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Anything I can see?” Her smile is warm, and Tony gets the feeling that this is familiar. This is something they’ve shared before, often. Something she misses, maybe, since it sounds like she used to be around more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve heaves a put-upon sigh. “Let me see what I’ve got.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rises to his feet and Tony hops down from his shoulders to the chair, more because the movement startled him than because his perch was unstable. Steve pauses to look back and make sure he’s all right before heading for the box of notebooks at the foot of his bed. Tony had assumed they were all for school, but some of them must be for fun. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He climbs up onto the desk to get a better angle to watch Steve from, and Peggy starts making little kissy noises at him. It’s distracting, it’s undignified, god, all of these people are going to be so embarrassed when they realize--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony’s tail twitches. His email to Steve hadn’t gone well, but he’s had a few more days to get used to himself, now. Maybe he can do better. The chat window is open at the bottom of the call. If he starts typing, his words should show up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s got to keep it simple. He doesn’t have a lot of time, and it’s really, really hard to type. They don’t need his whole life story, anyway, he just needs to show them that he speaks English and the rest should fall into place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Help me </span>
  </em>
  <span>should be enough</span>
  <em>
    <span>.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stretches out a paw toward the H key, focused, all there is in the world is an H and a paw and he’s going to get them together, he will, he’s doing it, he won’t be stopped. His shoulders twist sideways, a little. His foreleg doesn’t want to bend this way, his paw is as big as a fist...where is the H? There it is, okay, line up--</span>
  <em>
    <span>clackt.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sound zings through his brain like someone has just run an electrified wire in through one ear and out the other. He’s way too hyper-alert to take this kind of input. His left paw darts out before he’s even finished noticing the way the floor! Moved!! When he touched it!!! Get it! Get it it’s moving get it! Get it again it’s getting away get it get it get it get it--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something huge and warm loops under Tony’s chest from above, and by the time he’s figured out that it’s Steve, he’s tucked in against Steve’s chest, on his back. What?? Doesn’t Steve know about the thing, he’s got to get the thing--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony realizes that Steve is laughing. “He wrote you a letter, do you want it?” he’s saying to Peggy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“More than anything,” she laughs back, delighted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh. Right. Yes, good.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Speaking of people who are going to be embarrassed, when this is all over. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve leans over slightly and hits the Enter key. Tony turns his head, cringing internally, to see what he’s “written” this time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjerwdnjasmdfsrset5aesjkldfsfgv erwrwbj</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony rolls over and buries his face under Steve’s pectoral. Well, on the bright side, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>hit that H key. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Discussing the interpretive dance Tony had done on the keyboard keeps them entertained for a few moments, while Steve pages through the sketchbook he’d brought back. Wonderful. At least they're amused. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Steeee-ven,” Peggy wheedles, eventually. “Isn’t there one you can show me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve’s skin goes a little warmer under his shirt. That’s interesting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I mean, they’re mostly, uh…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Him?” Peggy finishes, knowingly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony looks up. Based on Steve’s relationship with news outlets over the last few days, Tony more-than-half-expects any “him” that Steve is embarrassed of drawing so much to be, well, him. He thinks he’s about to roll over and see that Steve has drawn The Big Book of Tony Stark. When he peers down over his shoulder at the book, though, it’s all different people. Not only do none of them look like Tony Stark, none of them look like each other, either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Any favorites of the day, then?” she prods, her expression prim and polite. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My </span>
  <em>
    <span>favorite </span>
  </em>
  <span>is going to be whichever one turns out to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>real,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Steve says. It has the clear air of something he’s said before, a few hundred times.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>These </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>drawings of Tony--not of Tony Stark, but of Steve’s person. Steve just doesn’t know that those are the same thing, yet, so he’s used his imagination. A lot. The book he’s flipping through holds dozens of portraits in a variety of drawing styles, of men of all builds, complexions, and ages. Here a chiseled jawline, here a long beard, full eyelashes, eyes wide set and close together, a little button nose or one with a high arched bridge.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I did like the way some of these turned out, though, in purely artistic terms,” Steve concedes, smugly over-gracious as he stops on a particular page. He settles Tony onto his lap, and Tony scans over the paper before Steve turns it around to show to the camera. He hopes that hairstyle in the top right corner isn’t what Steve likes best on this page, because</span>
  <em>
    <span> no. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Steve shows her a few different pages, lingering fondly over a few that had turned out particularly well. They’re not the </span>
  <em>
    <span>least </span>
  </em>
  <span>bit accurate. Good drawings, though. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My cousin Sharon is still single, you know,” Peggy drops into the conversation, unsubtly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve looks up from his sketches, eyebrows crammed together and mouth flat with annoyance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, I do know that your cousin Sharon is single. I know your cousin Sharon, and she is still single,” Steve says pointedly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s wrong with Sharon?” Peggy pouts. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s not mine, Peg,” Steve says, more gently. “I don’t want that. I want </span>
  <em>
    <span>him.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony schooches forward and butts his head into Steve’s forearm, trying to think </span>
  <em>
    <span>I want you too</span>
  </em>
  <span> hard enough that Steve will catch the gist of it. Steve’s expression doesn’t change, but he does rub the back of Tony’s neck with his free hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You won’t know what to do with him when you’ve got him, at this rate.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony would roll his eyes, if they worked that way. As if having to teach Steve </span>
  <em>
    <span>what to do with him</span>
  </em>
  <span> would be a hardship.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve gives her an incredulous look from under his brows. “Yes, I’m sure the things you and I used to do in high school have really helped you figure out how to handle Angie. Extremely useful experience. Highly applicable.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“More than you’d think,” she counters, with a sly smile. Tony’s train of thought screeches to a halt and slides right off the rails, throwing sparks. Holy shit. So Peggy </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> an ex-girlfriend, apparently. But, a nice one. Like Pepper. Okay. Wow. He didn’t know other people had those.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Steve shakes his head at her, and rubs his eyes. He checks the clock and winces, visibly. “I oughta get to bed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, you ought,” she agrees. “Any plans for the big day this weekend?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Big? What, twenty-six is a special number where you come from?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They’re all special, when they’re your own. Are you having a</span>
  <em>
    <span> party,</span>
  </em>
  <span> you difficult man.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We are having a </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fourth of July </span>
  </em>
  <span>party, and all of our friends are going to come and watch fireworks from the roof, and then Bucky will make me blow out way too many candles on lopsided cake because he refuses to buy them at stores, and it’s going to be great and I wish you could be there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Me too,” she smiles sadly. “Happy almost-Birthday, Steve. Give Bucky my love, and don’t stay up so late next time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah. Say hi to Angie for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She waves, and blows him a kiss. Steve waves back--until he’s seized by an idea, and instead very gently lifts Tony up by the ribcage until he’s in view and wiggles his fingers under the back of Tony’s foreleg, to make </span>
  <em>
    <span>him </span>
  </em>
  <span>wave at her. Tony allows this. For the moment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t go on for long, thank god. Plus, either being forced to speak to another human being has reminded Steve that it’s late, or he’s finally just given up on tiny numbers in boxes, for now, because he shuts his computer down instead of re-opening his homework. He stands and heads for his dresser; Tony hops back over to the bed. He watches Steve strip out of his shirt with a slightly wistful sort of appreciation--</span>
  <em>
    <span>damn</span>
  </em>
  <span> he must do a lot of pushups--but deliberately turns his back as soon as Steve’s hands fall to the waistband of his jeans.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony is a </span>
  <em>
    <span>gentleman, </span>
  </em>
  <span>thank you very much. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t turn back around until the lights go out and he feels the mattress dip. Steve sleeps in adorable plaid lounge pants and v-neck shirts, so if he’s in bed then it’s safe to look. Tony dances out of the way as Steve climbs in, taking refuge near the wall. The blankets heave and billow and come to rest stretched into a tent over the broad outline of Steve’s shoulders. Steve is curled up on his side, and he puts one hand out, palm up, over the covers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For the first couple of nights, Tony had been too cautious, too nervous and alarmed by the towering shadow to settle nearby, even though he knew it was just Steve. He’s been working on that. Last night he’d dozed off with his face nestled into the palm of Steve’s hand and stayed there for hours. Steve seems to be hoping for a repeat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tony stares down and watches Steve’s fingers flex invitingly in the dimness.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Actually, fuck that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stands, abruptly, and strides forward with purpose, straight into the open triangle of space where the sheets drape away from Steve’s chest. Steve holds perfectly still, barely breathing. There’s a burst of excited affection from his side of the bond--Tony misses a step when it hits him, but doesn’t stop. He keeps right on walking until his nose brushes the front of Steve’s shirt, then shoves his face along the smooth curve of Steve’s chest. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mine.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The back of his cat-brain likes that a lot, so he keeps at it, getting his face all over what’s his, flipping around and working his way back when his human-brain reminds him that he’s getting a little too far south.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time he’s rubbing his face up the underside of Steve’s chin he’s purring so hard he can’t hear himself think, and he just...collapses. He curls up with his back to Steve, the littlest spoon, and Steve carefully circles him with an arm, caging him in a little, but he’s not trapped. Just safe. It’s warm, and dark, and he can feel Steve breathing behind him, and smell Steve all around him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s safe.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/8517217">Harrison MacIntyre</a> appears with permission from the illustrious <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifigrl47/pseuds/scifigrl47">scifigrl47</a>. Yes, we will be seeing more of him, and no, this will not be a full-on <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/18228">Toasterverse</a> crossover.</p>
        </blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
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  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23178793">Gift Art - Found Cat - Making Biscuits</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syan/pseuds/Syan">Syan</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
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